The Biden administration is exerting full diplomatic pressure on its allies and partners in the Middle East to limit the escalation of the likely attack by Iran and its proxies against Israel.
President Biden and Vice President Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, were scheduled to meet Monday with national security officials in the White House Situation Room after Iran reiterated its intention to punish Israel for the apparent assassination of Hamas’s main political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. on July 31st.
Biden spoke on Monday with King Abdullah II of Jordan, following calls from Secretary of State Antony Blinken with Qatar’s prime minister and Egypt’s foreign minister. Blinken also spoke over the weekend with his Group of Seven counterparts and held separate calls with the British and French foreign ministers and the Iraqi prime minister.
“We do not want Iran to take further action, and that is the message we have consistently conveyed to our partners in the region,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said at Monday’s briefing.
“We are at a critical moment for the region and it is important that all parties take action in the coming days to prevent escalation and calm tensions. Climbing is in no one’s interest.”
In a show of diplomatic urgency, Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi made an extremely rare trip to Tehran on Sunday, seeking to influence Iran’s response. The Associated Press reported that it was the first visit by a senior Jordanian official to Iran in more than 20 years.
But it’s unclear whether the diplomacy will have an impact, said Gordon Gray, a former ambassador to Tunisia and a more than three-decade veteran of the State Department who held senior roles focused on the Middle East.
“I give them credit for trying, if that’s what they did, but that’s not going to be a message that gets heard,” he said.
“I think there will be retaliation, I think that is inevitable. It is a matter, at least, of saving face or national honor. The question is the scope of this retaliation.”
Even as the US tried to calm tensions, the Pentagon dispatched significant resources to the region in anticipation of the attack.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday ordered a squadron of fighter jets, Navy ships and air defenses to the Middle East in an effort to “mitigate the possibility of regional escalation by Iran or Iran’s partners and proxies.” ”.
The Pentagon also said it would maintain the presence of an aircraft carrier strike group in the Middle East, transfer more cruisers and destroyers with ballistic missile defense capabilities to the European and Middle Eastern regions, and prepare additional ballistic missile defenses based on land for the area.
The strengthening of military power in the region fulfills Biden’s promise last week to strengthen Israel’s security, a promise made in a phone call on Thursday to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Biden “discussed efforts to support Israel’s defense against threats, including against ballistic missiles and drones, to include new U.S. defensive military deployments,” according to a readout of the call.
The administration maintains that the US priority is to avoid a wider war in the Middle East.
“The United States also remains intensely focused on de-escalating tensions in the region and pushing for a ceasefire as part of a hostage agreement to bring hostages home and end the war in Gaza,” Austin said Friday.
The head of US Central Command, General Michael Kurilla, the general in charge of US forces in the Middle East, is also in the region, the Pentagon confirmed on Monday. Although the trip was planned before the recent escalations, he was reportedly trying to help mobilize an international and regional coalition to defend Israel’s skies.
The US military last played a major role in the direct defense of Israel almost four months ago, on April 13 and 14, when its forces helped shoot down hundreds of missiles and drones launched by Iran.
Biden’s deployment of important military resources demonstrates US commitment to Israel’s security, but his patience issupposedly worn outwith Netanyahu about the failure – so far – to reach a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas and the wisdom of killing Haniyeh inside Tehran at a crucial moment in the negotiations.
Netanyahu was in the US on a high-level visit a week before Haniyeh’s assassination.
The New York Times reported that Biden told Netanyahu Haniyeh that the assassination was “untimely.”An Israeli broadcasterwent further, saying that Biden told Netanyahu to “stop intimidating me”, after the Israeli leader told the president that his country was moving forward in negotiations on a hostage agreement.
Biden described his call with Netanyahu as “very direct” and said he told Netanyahu he should “move forward” on the ceasefire immediately.
“We have the basis for a ceasefire. He should move on, and they should move on now,” Biden said Friday.
Although families of hostages held by Hamas emerged after a meeting between Biden and Netanyahu in Washington on July 25, expressing new optimism that a deal was within reach, dangerous developments on the ground overtook any goodwill between the negotiating parties.
“I wouldn’t characterize them as paralyzed,” Miller said at the State Department on Monday. “That agreement still stands. Nothing that has happened over the past week has contributed to eroding the fundamental agreement on the structure of this ceasefire.”
That framework, which Biden presented at the end of May, would stop the fighting and release Israeli hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons. The truce would also allow for increased humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip and allow Palestinians displaced from the north to return to their homes.
The White House previously said it believed the gaps between Israel and Hamas were bridgeable — but Hamas accused Israel of adding new terms into the discussions, which Israel reportedly said were false.
Israeli negotiators met for hours to discuss in Cairo on Saturday, but there is little sign that the gaps have been closed.
“The two decision makers in this are Benjamin Netanyahu and [Hamas chief in Gaza] Yahya Sinwar, and it’s not clear to me that either of them realize that it’s in their interest to have a ceasefire agreement,” said Gray, who is the Kuwaiti professor of Gulf and Arabian Peninsula affairs at the United States’ Elliott School of International Affairs. George Washington University. .
“As a former diplomat who spent a lot of time in the Middle East… you almost have to be optimistic,” Gray continued. “But we have to look at the situation – and it is difficult to be very optimistic about the prospects of concluding a ceasefire agreement anytime soon.”
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
